Chicago in the 1920s. Booze may be illegal but that’s not keeping people from drinking and gangsters from making a killing. When an amateur boxer named Jack McGurn (Sean Faris) joins the mob, he befriend an up-and-coming criminal named Al Capone (Milo Gibson). While Capone rises through the ranks, McGurn is always by his side, usually firing a tommy gun. When Capone finally becomes the boss of Chicago, McGurn becomes his second-in-command and a leading strategist in the war against Capone’s rival, George “Bugs” Moran (Peter Facinelli).
If you’re looking for a historically accurate film about 1920s Chicago, look elsewhere. Today, “Machine Gun” McGurn is best known for being the mastermind behind the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (which, of course, is recreated in Gangster Land) but it’s doubtful that he was ever Capone’s second-in-command. Famed Capone associates like Frank Nitti, Gus Alex, and Murray Humphreys are nowhere to be found in Gangster Land, nor is Eliot Ness. Instead Jason Patric plays the righteous and fictional Detective Reed.
What the film lacks in historical accuracy, it makes up for in gangster action. There’s enough tommy gun action, car chases, and showgirls to keep most gangster film aficionados happy. All of the usual Capone stuff is recreated: Johnny Torrio is assassinated, Dion O’Bannon is killed in his flower shop, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre scandalizes the nation. Though the film never displays anything more than a Wikipedia-level understanding of the prohibition era and there’s not a single gangster cliché that isn’t used, Gangster Land is briskly paced and makes good use of its low-budget. Sean Faris is stiff as McGurn but Milo Gibson (son of Mel) is better than you might expect as Al Capone and the underrated Jason Patric makes the most of his limited screen time. Fans of The Sopranos may want to watch for the chance to see Meadow herself, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, as McGurn’s showgirl wife.
All of the covers below were done by Ken Barr, a Scottish artist who had a long and prolific career in the United States. Along with painting several paperback covers, Barr also did work for Marvel and DC comics and was well-known for his Doc Savage magazine covers. Born in 1933, Barr began his career in the 50s and worked until his retirement in 1987. Highly regarded for the wide variety of the work that he produced, Barr’s covers are still highly sought by collectors.
It would be accurate for one to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger was king of the 80’s action flicks. He first burst onto the scene in the titular role in Conan the Barbarian then it’s follow-up sequel. Yet, it would be his role in James Cameron’s The Terminator in 1985 that would make him a household name.
He began to crank out action films after action film every year to varying degrees of success and quality between 1984 and 1987. It would be in the summer of 1987 that he would add a third iconic action film role to stint as Conan the Barbarian and the relentless cybernetic killer, the Terminator.
Maj. Dutch Schaefer in John McTiernan’s action scifi Predator cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger as the most bankable movie star of the 1980’s. The film itself has become a go-to classic whenever film fans of all stripes discuss what were some of the best films of the era. Yes, I do categorize Predator as one of the best to come out of the 1980’s. It does more than hold it’s own when stacked up against Oscar winners, festival darlings and indie cult-favorites.
It’s a film that takes the premise that “man is the most dangerous game” to new levels by adding in a scifi element to the story. That scifi element being an extraterrestrial hunter who comes to Earth every so often to hunt. It’s chosen prey tends to be killers, fighters and soldiers at the top of their craft and usually during times of extreme conflict.
The film, as written by the two brothers John and Jim Thomas, actually works like a slasher horror film in the beginning as Dutch and his team of elite commandos trek through the Central American jungle on a rescue mission. A mission that lands the team in finding the grisly remains of another American special forces team. Questions come up as to whether their CIA liaison (played by Carl Weathers of Rocky and Rocky II fame) knows more about the true nature of their supposed rescue mission than he’s willing to let on.
It’s once the team, still being stalked through the jungle by an unseen predator, finally find the people they’re suppose to rescue that all hell breaks loose in more ways than one. The action is loud, messy and exquisitely choreographed and filmed. Unlike some of the action films of the last ten years, Predator succeeds with it’s action scenes for having a director who uses very long takes and little to no hand-held to keep the action geography easy to follow and the action choreography unencumbered by too many edits and cuts.
Even once the team realizes that they were now being hunted and that whoever, or whatever is hunting them, the film still continues to stay on a creative track. When I mentioned that the film plays out like slasher film, it does in way in that the titular character behaves and moves like slasher killers. It seems to be everywhere and nowhere. The very victims it’s hunting only see it when it’s too late and death’s upon them.
The film’s dialogue has been quoted by so many fans that memes have been created around them. Yet, this doesn’t mean that the film is hilarious. What it does have was that masculine, brother’s-in-arms banter and quips that’s become a sort of signature for screenwriter and director Shane Black who was hired to do some uncredited rewrites on the Thomas Brother’s original script. Black would also end up playing one of the commandos in the film.
Outside of Arnold himself, Predator would be best-known for the effects work by the late and great Stan Winston, who would come in to help redesign the title character (with some help from his buddy James Cameron) and the rest as they would say was film history. It would be difficult to go anywhere around the world, show the Predator to some random person and they not know what it is.
Predator was one of those films that people, at first, thought was just a mindless, popcorn flick. The type of cinema that was to be seen then forgotten for better fare. Yet, in the end, Predator ended up becoming not just a classic of its genre, but a perfect example of a film that transcends it’s genre roots to become just a great film, in general.
Is it so unusual to work that human need a holiday to remind them to do it? Cats don’t need a special day to remind them to do their duty. A cat wakes up everyday knowing what needs to be doing and preparing to do it. A cat knows that importance of exploring its territory. A cat knows the importance of keeping a strict schedule. Also a cat knows that it can get away with sleeping on the job. In fact, sleep is a large part of the job!
The flame-haired one thinks that Labor Day is a “left-wing, communist plot” but I don’t understand what any of those words mean so I just let her ramble on until it’s time to be fed.
Today is Labor Day so sit back, do no work, and make it a great one! If you need something to do on this Labor Day, there are over 11,000 posts on this site, the earliest of which was published all the way back to 2009! Feel free to explore and let us know what you think.
Fear not, the cat will keep an eye on things until you get back…
In a 1984 interview, Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler had this to say about the song that would not only become the band’s biggest hit but also one of the best known videos from the early years of MTV:
The lead character in “Money for Nothing” is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/custom kitchen/refrigerator/microwave appliance store. He’s singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real….
According to Knopfler, he was in a New York appliance store when he heard a man who worked there complaining about all of the TVs in the shop being tuned to MTV. (Urban legend has it that the man was watching a Motley Crue video.) Knopfler wrote down the man’s exact words, which included the famous line about “money for nothing and chicks for free,” and later set them to music. (Knopfler also included the man’s controversial description of a rock star as being “that little faggot with the earring and the makeup.” In 2011, 26 years after the song’s initial release, that line would lead to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council banning the song from being played on Canadian radio stations.) After hearing the band’s initial recording of the song, Sting suggested the “I want my MTV” line and was rewarded with a co-writer credit.
The ground-breaking music video was one of the first to feature computer animation. Under the direction of Steve Barron, Ian Pearson and Gavin Blair (who later founded Rainmaker Studios) created the animation using a Bosch FGS-4000 CGI system and a Quantel Paintbox system.
Money for Nothing spent 3 weeks as the number one single in the United States and the video was named Video of the Year at the 3rd Annual MTV Music Awards.
Six years after making his directorial debut with The Cabin In The Wood, Drew Goddard returns to the director’s chair with Bad Times at the El Royale. Featuring Jeff Bridges, Jon Hamm, Dakota Johnson, and Chris Hemsworth, Bad Times at the El Royale will be released on October 12th.
From Universal Pictures, here is the second trailer to First Man. Damien Chazelle’s upcoming film stars Ryan Gosling as the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, and Claire Foy as his first wife. First Man will be released on October 12th, putting it in head-to-head competition with Bad Times At the El Royale.
If you have ever wondered what you would get if you combined Bruce Willis, Adrien Brody, and unconvincing CGI, Air Strike is here to answer your question. Air Strike will be released on October 26th. Mel Gibson (yes, that Mel Gibson) was the production designer.
Finally, if you missed the first two Unfriended movies, E-Demon is here to shock you. E-Demon will be released on September 14th.
Continuing our focus on books that I scored at Autoptic 2018 a couple Sundays back, this week we’re going to take a look at the first four issues or Robert Sergel’s six-part Bald Knobber mini-comics series, which I will duly “spoil” the final verdict on right now : these impressed the hell out of me. Why? Let’s find out —
Welcome to the book report from hell! In Bald Knobber #1, we meet our protagonist, a kid from BF, Missouri named Cole who, at first glance, doesn’t seem too terribly different from any number of alienated/disaffected youths populating the pages of, say, a million and one Charles Forsman comics — on his best day he seems like another so-called “incel” waiting to happen, on his worst he seems like the type who might shoot up the school. On this day, however, he’s been compelled to share his summer reading with…
Chicago in the 1920s. Booze may be illegal but that’s not keeping people from drinking and gangsters from making a killing. When an amateur boxer named Jack McGurn (Sean Faris) joins the mob, he befriend an up-and-coming criminal named Al Capone (Milo Gibson). While Capone rises through the ranks, McGurn is always by his side, usually firing a tommy gun. When Capone finally becomes the boss of Chicago, McGurn becomes his second-in-command and a leading strategist in the war against Capone’s rival, George “Bugs” Moran (Peter Facinelli).
Through the Shattered Lens 